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Monday, July 16, 2012

Accelerating Dangers & Opportunities from Transparency

The future comes rushing upon us so quickly, already I worry that the world portrayed in my freshly minted novel
will be old hat long before the time it is set, 30 years from now.
(Meaning that we need futuristic and open-minded thought experiments
now, more than ever.)

Try these items on for size...

With new laser technology, hidden government scanners
will instantly know everything about you from 150 feet (or 50 meters)
away, detecting traces of drugs, explosives, bioweapons or gunpowder on
your clothes or luggage -- even recording your adrenaline levels. The
U.S. Department of Homeland Security will install these scanners (a
million times more sensitive than current systems) at airports and
border crossings across the country -- as early as 2013. The Russians
are developing a comparable system.

Now...
if this reduces our exposure to x-rays and allows the TSA to tamp down
the aggravation at airports, you can expect the new systems to have
their upside. On the other hand, this sort of thing could be Big
Brother's most delicious dream. (More on that aspect.)

...then there's this. Cell phone providers received 1.3 million cell phone snooping requests
last year from law enforcement agencies seeking information on
locational data and calling records. There is little oversight over who
can make such requests, or what is done with the information.

This is the important distinction between surveillance and sousveillance -- looking down vs. looking back.And though I've covered it at-length from many directions, I expect to be doing so repeatedly, for the rest of my life.

Is
it even remotely possible for sousveillance to work? For citizens to
shine enough light upward to remind our civil servants that they are
servants? To keep a choke-chain on our guard dogs, so they never see
themselves as wolves? To remind corporations that they are constructs,
and oligarchs that they are not feudal lords, with droit du seigneur?
As it happens, there are dozens of techniques that might help...
providing we nurture the calm, rational... but militant...
determination to make this practically happen.

Let's start simple. See just one practical approach
that - with a very simple slip of legislation that could be written on
one piece of paper - and maybe cost 20 million dollars - we might
suddenly and smoothly add a layer of safety and accountability to help
let us sleep at night. It's no panacea! But by simply changing how
government inspectors general function, we might follow the sage advice of Sun Yat Sen and stymie the bad in government, while aiding the good.

...the
tendency of humans to filter out news or opinions or views or even
sensory input that we don't like or agree with. (Yes, one side of the
political "spectrum" is currently doing it to psychotic degrees... but
the other end does it too!) We've been finding out that our brains
naturally pass disagreeable info and opinions and input through emotional centers rather than those devoted to reason. But as predicted, electronic "filters" are making things even worse for some, even while opening up vast universes of wonder and possibilities for others. See "Are we stuck in a filter bubble...hearing only what we want to hear?" Then see how this very issue was dealt with, in Earth (1989).

Indeed. And then comes the new world of "augmented reality."
Patricia F. Anderson wrote: "Graffiti goes virtual with an augmented reality app for your cell phone, called LZRTAG Shades of @DavidBrin 's early scenes in Existence." Indeed,
the layering of virtual surfaces over our world has already begun.
Still images, animations and video can be tagged to real world surfaces,
so your smartphone can interact with media, billboards, lampposts or
landmarks. Vernor Vinge and I do - however - show where it must eventually lead. That is, where it must lead if we are lucky and do smart things!

Think
I am naive? Teams at Harvard and the University of Hong Kong have been
using new software that allows them to watch the censoring of posts on
Chinese social-media sites more closely than before. Monitoring the Monitors summarizes their report in The Economist:

The
team found that, overall, 13% of all social media posts in China were
censored. Yet their most surprising result is that posts critical of the
government are not consistently censored. On the other hand, posts
urging people to assemble in protest, are generally removed from the
internet within hours. Harvard professor Gary King writes, “Clearly the
goal is actually to repress people gathering.”

The
researchers analyzed the posts that had been censored to determine
exactly what had made them objectionable to the government. What they
found was a constantly changing list of keywords and sensitive topics,
resulting in "a cat-and-mouse contest between people and censors.”

=== Keep the dream alive ===

On the recent American Independence Day... with a marathon of the eponymous film
playing in the background ... I was reminded of the ways that our
revolution has affected the world. Sometimes for ill - though less than
any other great "pax" power across time. And sometimes for profound
good. That may be viewed as biased (though in fact, I am more of a
Californian than a yankee). So I suggest steeping in points of view
that might be considered neutral and yet poetically insightful. Such as
this account,
by the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, of how a remote Circassian
mountain tribe once sat at his feet, demanding stories about ... Abraham
Lincoln.

Are we made of lesser stuff than our parents, or the
heroes of the first phase of the American Civil War? We are in phase three now.

Wake up and end it. By winning it.

=== Science Miscellany ===

We
need to discuss what to do about nuclear waste. It never made the
slightest sense for us to abandon the Yucca Mountain site on account of
some supposed small chance that the depository might leak a little in
10,000 years. Say what? So these people are now willing to talk about
sci fi levels of time, when they won’t even discuss a decade from now,
on any other issue? Dig it. In 10,000 years, the stored radionuclides
are far more likely to be more valuable as stored "gold", than they are
to leak into a desert aquifer. Read up.

"Tacitus, I honestly admit that it is possible that I treated your counter-example unfairly in the past. Frankly, all I remember is THAT I did not find that it met the criteria and you complained about my bias... hence I look fwd to when you do dredge it back up so we can chew on it more carefully, now that book release frenzy is over."

As it happens I have been looking at some rather interesting data. I will be nightshifting a bit, so can't condense it until the weekend.

And character limits may force me to post it to my blog and link. My usual visitors-expecting archeology, robotics and dogs in silly costumes-will just have tolerate the departure.

So, human nature + virtual overlays means that in the (fairly near) future people won't even SEE things they disagree with or don't like in the world, rather than just refusing to acknowledge or condone them?

In the spirit of enclosing long paragraphs of random numbers in our emails to tie up the snoops trying to break our non-existent "code", I propose an aerosol spray containing a few thousand of the most suspicious molecules, and everyone can spray any object they see at any time as they move about civilization.

Perhaps the Inspector General Service could be tried at the state level. States are so strapped for cash now that anything that saves money and/or increases efficiency "should be" popular. I'll forward this to my states 2 major candidates for governor - who knows? they actually need issues to tell them apart!

("Should be" is in quotes for reasons that should be evident.)

Alternatively, at the very least, IG recommendations should be posted online for the public to comment and vote on.

And ... let me put another plug in for SkyTruth as another direction for sousvelliance.

In David's original (linked) article with the idea, he includes an example of the amount of money that could be saved by implementing the thousands of suggestions from the IGs (...I's G?). Suggestions which were at best ignored, at worst suppressed.

If you could find a similar set of figures in your own state, this would allow his/her opponent to justify the introduction of a statewide uniformed IG dept. (Otherwise, they risk looking like they are "creating more government", which is verboten these days.) "My opponent ignored X thousands of recommendations from his own Inspector Generals(*), which would have saved X hundred million dollars! Why, I hear his cronies even tried to get some of those Inspectors sacked! That's why, in my first 100 days in office, I will..."

(* Yes, "Inspector Generals". We don't need no faggoty college grammar from you, city boy.)

[tedFeb 27: Not to be confused with TEDFeb, which has nothing to do with bears.]

Jumper,It's always surprised me that more people don't get pranked with the training spray used for drug-sniffing dogs. It just seems so obvious.(*) Even if you get caught with the spray, although it's not meant to be sold to the public, it's not actually illegal.

Ian G... the Qunfuz article is interesting and a good added perspective. But of course he exaggerates the EXTENT of the lefty counter-counter think, favoring the "brave Assad regime."

I mean geez, that is a snippet minority flake view espoused my silly people who are looking for a shock reaction.

Qunfuz also does not go far enough in redefining the Saudis away from "American clients". Clearly, when the GOP is in charge in the US... we are the Saudi clients. So are all viewers of the partly Saudi owned Fox.

An anti-piracy group paid a Dutch composer to produce a theme for a one off anti-piracy event. Then went off and used it on 70 different commercial DVDs without bothering to pay any royalties.

"You wouldn't use your public-interest position for person gain?"

Head of the Dutch "Artists' Rights" group tried to... "help"... by suggesting the composer sign his rights over a record company he just happened to own. Anyway, lawyers were generally thrown about the place.

MIT Professor Stephen Mann, who wears a "wearable computer" as a kind of prosthetic for the past 27 years (to the point where he can't walk properly without it), was assaulted by McDonalds staff while on holiday with his family in France. Even though he had a doctors letter and other documentation with him, they tried to rip the head-mounted prosthetic off his head, damaging it in the process. And ripped up his documents in front of him.

You eat at McDonalds because no matter which McDonalds you go to, you're guaranteed a certain quality of food. It might not be the best of food, it might not be something you like, but you know it will fill you and not make you sick.

I eat McDonalds (as does my dad) when we drive out west each year to go hunting in Colorado. They're everywhere so we're guaranteed to be able to find someplace to eat, more often than not. It's pretty much the only time we eat at Mickey Ds.

One more thing: given the recent copyright law revisions passed by our Parliament on Stephen Harper's watch, it may now be a crime for Prof. Mann to visit any and all movie theatres anywhere in Canada.

(Unless he's already talking with Michael Geist at U of Ottawa about this sort of issue...?)

Just felt like sharing a whimsical and crazy idea for a fanfic I'll never write.

Imagine, a world devastated by magical war... as great ravenous beasts known as the Vold attack from Beyond. The only defense England has are gigantic golems piloted by teenage wizards and witches, the only people with imaginations vivid enough to let them control their giant clay machines.

Idiots who run the Boy Scouts, They are parsing it all wrong. Persecuting a lesbian cub scout leader???? WTF?

Both of my sons have done scouts. One is Eagle and the other nearing it. The usefulness in helping transform them into sturdy and trustworthy and useful men is beyond comparison to any other non-home influence I could imagine and my only regret is that our daughter could not do it.

But the BSA leadership has got to shift on the gay thing and on atheism. The latter simply has to go away, completely. And in fact, I know of no case where it has ever been a practical issue.

A polemical one? Yes. Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller) and I have tussled over it. He wants "reverent" removed from the Scout Oath and I say "WTF just revere the universe man. Yeesh."

The gay thing is simply stupid, though. All it would take is a REPHRASING of the position! Simply say this:

"Human males are inherently dangerous. A small fraction of them do most of the terrible things that make life difficult or stressful for countless millions.

" One of the core purposes of Scouting is to reduce that fraction by helping parents and civilization to raise boys into decent, generous, tolerant, skilled and calmly courageous men. In order to accomplish this task, we rely on a vast array of volunteers, especially parents, to participate in our programs. This requires of the BSA that it establish very rigorous and stringent child protection policies.

"We recognize and accept that the vast majority of Gay and lesbian people are fine folks who would never in any way seek to impose their lifestyle on impressionable boys. Nevertheless, we are caught in a bind that is created by the small minority of that inclination whose attractions might draw them toward our scouts in unwholesome ways.

"What it boils down to is this. Any organization that deals with thousands or millions of young potential victims must exercise extra care and scrutiny toward any male adults who might be attracted, sexually, to those youths.

"If a single adult heterosexual male were to approach the Girl Scouts seeking a position of leadership and control over female teens, without being one of the parents, would you not expect the Girl Scouts to exercise some skepticism?

"Are the Boy scouts unreasonable to exercise similar skepticism, if a single adult homosexual male seeks a position of leadership and control over male teens?

"We shall continue to maintain that policy of skeptical protection... but hereby announce that it is being modified to be more reasonable and to move with the times.

1) Any overall ban on lesbians or female LGBT simply does not meet the criteria of common sense.

2) Toward gay single men who seek leadership positions in the BSA, we now shift from a ban to "skeptical inquiry" that might help us to reasonably protect our young charges, without preventing diligent and patient gay adults - who are willing to jump a few extra hoops - from adding their wealth of experience, wisdom and generosity of spirit to our 100 year old movement."

Okay... I don't expect to win any friends with that... AND I ASK THAT YOU LEAVE THIS DRAFT RUMINATION HERE, UNDER INFORMAL COMMENTS, WITHOUT TAKING IT (OR WARPED "HE-SAID") OUT TO THE WEB. It is just for discussion here.

My stepson made Eagle scout and my daughter would've liked a unified "Kid scouts" (6 to 12 years, than split by gender.), if such a thing existed. The lesbian is likely being persecuted out of some bizarre notion of fairness, I would have no worries about her being around young men.

"Treat with skeptical scrutiny any (non-parent) adult male who seeks a position of leadership/control over young people of the gender they happen to be attracted to."

Heck, even parent males are watched carefully by the Girl Scouts! As they should be!

This is no time for evenhandedness between genders. The position should be diametrically opposite and issued jointly by BSA and Girl Scouts.

"A small but very significant fraction of adult men are dangerous and drawn toward youths. We assert a commonsense right to look more carefully at those non-parents who are drawn toward positions of leadership/control over youths of whichever gender attracts them."

It is suddenly no longer about LGBT discrimination at all. It is about a worrisome fraction of male humans who might and do cause harm. (e.g. Jerry Sandusky.)

I had a great time in Scouting and can totally see the value, but the built-in authoritarianism appears to make it susceptible to the same sort of self-selecting idiocy that is driving the Vatican to ruin.

David, ALL groups that deal with young people have policies in place to protect their charges from sexual exploitation.

That's a given and hardly needs a special declaration.

You might also want ot note thatsexual abuse of girls by lesbians is also a real concern.

The Scouts simply need to adopt the same policies as any other group in a contemporary western society.

For example, here in Queensland, teachers, school employees, coaches and, yes, scout masters and salaried employees of the Scouts have to get a "Blue Card" which involves a national check of police records (amongst other things).

That strikes mes as a far more effective way to protect children than a ban on openly gay men.

Need I point out that heterosexual neb are actually more likely to be pedophiles than homosexuals.

(Homosexuality is a sexual preference. Pedophilia is a mental illness that inclines its victims to sexually assault children. Many if not most pedophiles are sexually attracted to children of both sexes.)

A quick addendum: is they any evidence, ANY edidence at all, that sexual abuse within scouting has worsened in any of the countries that have allowed gays to serve in leadership roles?

The protection issue is a smoke-screen, the BSA simply wants to exclude people it considers morally unacceptable - which includes atheists and agnostics as well as homosexuals.

For that matter, the BSA oath requires Scouts to do their duty "to God" - which is interpreted to exclude members of polytheistic religons such as Hinduism and Buddhism.

I suppose we should be grateful they did, eventally and reluctantly,drop their requirements for racial segregation.

Oh and I'm yet to hear of the BSA refusing to allow scouting groups from national associations that accept gays to take part in scouting events iwthin the US or prohibiting its members from attendign events in those countries.

I guess it's only the ANERICAN gays you have ot watch out for (that or the real reason for the ban is that the Catholic church and the Mormon church sponsor thousands of scout troops in the US and would withdraw their support if the policy was changed.)

The Catholic church are, of course, the first group most people would turn to for advice on how to protect young people from sexual abuse by authority figures.

Ian: "You might also want ot note thatsexual abuse of girls by lesbians is also a real concern."

To whom? Nobody I know. When was the last time you heard of a lesbian Sandusky? Oh they exist, anecdotally. But seriously, any effort to make this "evenhanded" is just silly. And so are Girl OR Boy scouts who fret about female Lesbians or Bi's.

Ian: "The Scouts simply need to adopt the same policies as any other group in a contemporary western society"

They HAVE! We have to take Child Protection courses and there's a rule that no adult is ever to be alone with a scout, ever. Silly but necessary.

And you still miss the point. I do NOT claim that gay men are more dangerous to Boy Scouts than hetero men are to Girl Scouts. Both have to watch out for MALES who are attracted to their youthful charges.

Period. It is not gayness that is the problem. It is perverted males who want to be near helpless members of the gender they are attracted to.

My position is both logical and ENTIRELY NEUTRAL on the big picture of gay vs straight tolerance. The issue is not gayness it is males.

Ian: "The protection issue is a smoke-screen, the BSA simply wants to exclude people it considers morally unacceptable - which includes atheists and agnostics as well as homosexuals."

I agree that their are troglodytes in leadership roles in BSA. They would not agree with my attempt at a compromise because they personally ARE bigots. I oppose them, openly.

Ian: "For that matter, the BSA oath requires Scouts to do their duty "to God" - which is interpreted to exclude members of polytheistic religons such as Hinduism and Buddhism. "

You are being silly. Like Penn. There are no efforts across the BSA to police any aspect of "god" or "reverent"... yes, the mormon troops are another matter. And there are troops with harraguing scoutmasters and I would fight that if I saw it. But I have never, ever personally seen a trace of it in 50 years of scouting.

The crux... making an enemy organization out of one that does as much good in the world as scouting is simply loony. There are irksome aspects that are gradually being reformed and I have put forward a suggestion that would re-couch the whole thing in a way that would eliminate half of the injustice and move us forward. In 20 years my approach would be obsolete, now it would be a step forward.

Obdurate thickheaded nostalgia is a fault of the right. The left often, in its impatience, refuses to consider complexity.

From a perspective of a millennial, the BSA is stuck with the values of a bygone era. If the BSA wants to stay relevant in the 21st century, they are simply going to have to change their position on gays. The latest generation of parents, the millennials which are just now entering the years where they have children old enough to join the BSA, largely accepts the notion that gay people should have equal rights.

Taking stances those parents view as bigoted is entirely unhelpful toward ensuring they have the membership they need to ensure long-term vitality of the organization. I'm sure this all will change eventually along with shifts in leadership to the next generation, but by then, it may be too late.

I went through the BSA scrutiny a couple of years ago, when I served as Cubmaster.

They rigorously background-check and vet every adult volunteer. In my view the exclusion of gays from unit leadership is a bottom-up decision. Most scouts are sponsored by Catholic troops. Most units are Mormon.

Mormons are working through the truth of things. The trajectory is toward much greater tolerance. I have anecdotes to offer if anyone is interested. I don't know what the Catholics are doing, but I can attest that a nominal Cub Scout pack sponsored by a Mormon ward isn't going to quibble about a nine year old boy's conception of God. They're far too busy just executing the program.

Whether or not to admit girls to Tiger Cubs and Cub Scouts is left to a Council/District/Unit decision. In other words, the sponsoring organization decides. The only "boy only" groups left in the national charter are the actual red-epaulet and orange-epaulet Boy Scouts and Ventures, though I think girls can be Ventures.

Verifiably, young women are employed as camp counselors in our district in the PDX area, under Oregon's very liberal employment laws.

I'm not sure about Sandusky-level lesbian pedophiles, but there are definitely a number of female pedophiles out there in the teaching profession. Every so often you hear about some teacher who was caught sleeping with her mid-teen students. When you consider how many sex crimes go unreported... well, it's entirely possible that there are female pedophiles who do target girls.

A simple search on Bing quickly revealed two websites with data on female pedophiles. While you can't necessarily trust what you read online... I'm not sure these two sites are necessarily fake:

http://crime.about.com/http://www.wnd.com/

(I'm not linking to the specific stories in question because I didn't feel comfortable doing that. After all, I have no proof those stories are legit, which is why I linked the websites behind the threads in question.)

If I were to guess, I'd say that seeing that pedophilia is a mental illness and teachers are under increasing amounts of stress due to public and political sentiments against their pay and unions... and just snap one day and start behaving in a fashion they'd not do if not under the severe amount of stress they're under.

And speaking as a former substitute teacher who was sexually harassed by a female student (and then warned by the school administration next time to immediately report the girl to the administration because of the possibility of her trying to report me falsely to get me into trouble), it's also entirely possible that some of these cases (in which charges are not levied) were false charges against the teachers out of a twisted need for revenge by some socially-deficient young teen.

But to go back to the concept of the female Sandusky? They exist. They're just not usually in a position of extreme visibility as Sandusky was.

Re: Best street food in the world. I've been to NYC. Portland,OR, just kills it. Over 1200 various carts. And I can't think of a bad one that stayed open over a month. But then I have a "Cartivore" t-shirt, so I might not be a fair judge. Of course, cnn agrees with me http://articles.cnn.com/2010-07-19/travel/worlds.best.street.food_1_street-food-arepas-locals?_s=PM:TRAVEL

And us news and world http://travel.usnews.com/features/Worlds_Best_Street_Food/

Yeah, I walked past the permanent festival of food trucks at the Old Courthouse square in Portland, a week ago and thought about how many days it would take to cycle around and then go to line two on all the menus, then line three...

Jiminy, did any of you look at the range of religions listed as giving BSA faith awards?

Look up General Church of the New Jerusalem and Meher Baba... there's one for Zoroastrians!!

But the unitarian one... it means atheists and agnostics are welcome, so long as you use the word "unitarian" once in a while...

I know what you mean, Dr. Brin. I want to send them a cease-and-desist for copying verbatim one of my reviews but paying $10 for the right to join the forum just to do that doesn't sit right.

I e-mailed their tech support people but never received a response. It wasn't even a nasty cease-and-desist either, just a polite request. Ah well. They've not done anything like that since (that I'm aware of) and I did put up a copyright notification on my own website so hopefully having sent a request will be enough to protect my copyright.

SomethingAwful.com charges the $10 for an account, once, and nothing thereafter. There is no tech support and they never respond to requests. You'd probably have to go right to the DMCA cease-and-desist to get satisfaction on a copyright complaint. And even then you may not get it.

You know, they do repost comics there, in violation of the copyright for said comics. The problem is, you smack them with a stick and they swarm you worse than Japanese hornets. You know the hornets in question, they're the size of the palm of your hand and spit caustic liquid in your eyes?

They don't charge to read the site. They charge to join the forum (posting content to the forum). I suspect in the rules and regs they say "don't copy shit" or the like but it's not adhered to usually.

As such they probably get around that technicality.

And honestly, so long as they don't keep it up then I'm not going to suffer grief over it. I've posted my "please don't copy my stuff, you're allowed to do excerpts but not wholesale copying" request on my site, that should suffice for legal purposes.

Yeah, I take your point. SA tends to be overpopulated with young illiterate-literates, ping-ponging the most recent and popular ideals back and forth to one another. (Disclosure: I possess a dormant account and have traded merchandise on their forums.)

They're loyal to their sense of combined entitlement and each other, willing to participate in community acts of revenge-enforcement. A very interesting combination of openness, reciprocal loyalty, and relatively appalling immaturity. Craig's List, with attitude and lots of profanity.

Could be worse.

Hey, what if you were to take a bit of IP work, slap a Creative Commons license on it, and announce that you saw that people were copying your stuff, acknowledge the backhanded compliment and offer another, free of charge, with a polite request connected to your livelihood/reputation/whatever?

The funny thing is, I'd not even be aware that they did it except initially the person linked to my site. Then he removed the link because he didn't want me getting the traffic (which makes me think he was associated with John Solomon, a shock jock webcomic reviewer a few years back who thought "review" meant spouting f-bombs and insulting the cartoonist with various false accusations. Solly ultimately ran out of steam and his site vanished, but at one point he "reviewed" me and tried to rile up my readership by posting a link to his review to my forum. Which I promptly deleted. Time and time again.

Finally they went over my head and went after my host, Glych, who let a discussion start so long as my own dictates were followed: no links and no mentioning Solly by name. For a year afterward he'd deride a comic, link me while insulting me, and I would laugh in his face and thank him for all the traffic he sent my way... which was not reciprocated at all because none of my readers knew he existed. Finally it dawned on him that I was right at which point he stopped linking me.

So this is either Solly or one of his close associates and he realized that I was getting traffic from that link. I tracked it down (I was curious where the traffic came from) and noticed the copying of my review. If he'd not initially linked me then I'd never have known.

is a scientist, futurist and best-selling author. His novels include Earth, Existence, The Postman, and Kiln People, as well as Hugo Award winners Startide Rising and The Uplift War. The Transparent Society won a Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Assn.